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EP 5: Turning Breakdowns into Breakthroughs

Welcome to the Do It Scared™ podcast! In every episode of this podcast, we’ll talk about how to face your fears, overcome obstacles, and create a life you love! Today, we’ll explore how to turn your breakdowns into breakthroughs.

In life, and in business, things will always go wrong. It’s easy to let that get you down or get discouraged, but in fact, our biggest stumbles tend to lead to our most valuable lessons! If you’re ready to implement practical strategies to start re-framing things that go wrong as opportunities to grow and improve, tune in to this episode!

Take a moment to picture someone in your life for whom everything seems to always go right. This person might be a colleague at work who’s always on top of things and everyone seems to love her, or that mom of your kids’ friends who always looks perfectly put-together while baking delicious gluten-free treats for the next school event, or an online entrepreneur who simultaneously inspires you and makes you feel like you’ll never catch up. It’s easy to think these people have never struggled, and to feel jealousy.

Believe it or not, wishing for a smooth ride (like it seems like the person you’re picturing has) is counterproductive. It’s the bumps in the road that teach us all the good stuff! To start turning your breakdowns into breakthroughs, though, you need to make three key mindset shifts. First, you need to expect breakdowns and obstacles, and expect them as normal. In fact, you may discover that the joy is in the struggle! The second key mindset shift is automatically looking for the silver lining. The third and final key mindset shift is learning how to adopt a mindset of grace. This means not expecting perfection either from yourself or the people around you.

Tune in to learn much more about all of these mindset shifts, and what it means to make them. You’ll learn practical strategies, and I’ll illustrate how these can work through sharing a story about a humiliating experience I had years ago. After this episode, I hope you’ll understand how obstacles are actually opportunities in disguise!

Highlights

[02:14] – Ruth introduces today’s topic: overcoming obstacles, moving past mistakes, and turning our breakdowns into breakthroughs.[03:50] – Before we dive in, Ruth offers listeners a worksheet specific for this episode. You can get it by texting “breakdowns” to 44222 or by visiting this link![04:47] – Have you ever noticed that for some people, everything seems to go right all the time?[07:10] – Deep down, we all know that life isn’t all easy and full of sunshine and roses for anyone, even people who make success look effortless.[09:27] – Ruth truly believes that anyone can learn how to turn breakdowns into breakthroughs, if they’re willing to make three important mindset shifts.[09:52] – We hear about the first key mindset shift that we need to make.[12:56] – The second key mindset shift involves asking yourself what you can learn from a challenging situation, or how you can grow from an obstacle.[16:06] – Ruth explores the third and final mindset shift you need to adopt to consistently turn your breakdowns into breakthroughs.[17:26] – Over the past years, Ruth has had a lot of breakdowns in her business. She shares one particular story about a time that something went wrong for her.[20:42] – Ruth shares her reaction to being deliberately humiliated, as she has just described.[22:31] – On her flight home from the situation she has been talking about, Ruth wrote down five reminders to herself: be humble, be kind, be generous, be encouraging, and be forgiving.[24:20] – We hear about Ruth’s encounters with the people in her story after the negative incident that took place.[26:00] – Mistakes and missteps are never fun, and we never want things to go wrong, but obstacles are really just opportunities in disguise.[27:21] – Ruth reminds listeners to get the worksheet that goes with this episode. Either text “breakdowns” to 44222 or visit this link! She also invites listeners to get in touch.

4 Comments

Melissa D
on May 16, 2018 at 1:04 pm

I would have been *mortified* if someone from stage ridiculed me like that! There would have been a lot of tears and wine that night. 😭 You handled it with such grace. So glad to hear these gentlemen eventually apologized. That situation right there is a big reason why it’s hard for me to step forward and put myself out there. I KNOW there will be people not liking me/what I create. But regardless, each day I keep trying to take babysteps forward to achieve my goals, doing things scared. It’s very encouraging to hear that successful people DO feel fear. If you’re moving forward, you’re always in the realm of “the unknown”. There will be fear and butterflies in the tummy there. It’s normal and ok. Thanks for your podcasts. They’ve been helping me tremendously as I am moving forward in life.

Thank you, Ruth – love that you shared your moment at the conference – isn’t it funny what a vacuum we get sucked into for those events as we determine how to deal with them – as if there is no oxygen and no one else exists until we look up and see what a bonus that was (albeit painful).

I really enjoyed this podcast. Even though we should know that things can and will go wrong I think we are so focused on trying to do things right and feeling like it should go right we forget it’s okay if it doesn’t. So thank you for this podcast, this will help in every aspect of a persons life. I have to remember it’s normal to have obstacles. We have to figure out a way around them by looking for the lessons in the struggle and let the breakdowns lead to breakthroughs. Will try to start applying this today.

Hi Ruth!
I loved the tips and your shared experience. It brings me calmness and helps me with the anxiety of making mistakes. This is one of my fears that had stopped me many times. Thank you!!!!
Sandra